Expertise, Hit, and YOU! Part Two: Bear Druids
Hmm. Odd that Cat Form druids get to be kitties, but there is no charming diminutive for Bear druids. I suppose I could be all Alamo about it (Bare Durids!). Anyway, for the kitties, check out part one.
Someone stumbled across this site with the following search term: “druid tank minimum hit expertise.” I’m certain I didn’t have what they were looking for and I hope they found it. As I was pondering that implied questions, it seemed to me that should be a very simple thing to answer, but as I think further about it, I find it is not a straightforward answer at all. For both tanking and dps druids they provide benefits, but how much benefit?
Before I get into a discussion about those specifically, if you aren’t familiar with the attack table and how one-roll and two-roll systems work, WoW-Wiki has a good page on that. For a more in-depth look, check out the ElitistJerks Theorycrafting Think Tank page on Melee Combat Mechanics.
To properly determine the benefits, let’s first define them. Items that provide Hit Rating increase your chance to hit your target by reducing the miss chance on the attack table. At level 70 it requires 15.77 Hit Rating to reduce miss chance by 1%. Against a level 73 target (which raid bosses are) a normal attack, unmodified, by someone wielding only one weapon has a 9% chance to miss. 9 * 15.77 = 141.93 or 142 Hit Rating to eliminate the chance of your attacks to miss. (WoW-Wiki: Hit)
Expertise reduces the chance of your target to dodge or parry your attacks. It takes 3.9 Expertise Rating to increase your Expertise by 1 point, and each point reduces dodge/parry by .25% (or 4 Expertise per one percent). According to the EJ post, boss mobs have been parsed to have a 6% chance to dodge and a 12% chance to parry. To remove dodge from the attack table would require 24 Expertise (94 Expertise Rating) and removing Parries would require 48 Expertise (188 Expertise Rating). (WoW-Wiki: Expertise)
That’s what Hit and Expertise do, and how much benefit they provide is different for DPS and for tanking.
Bear Form
For tanking druids, the application of Hit and Expertise generally fall into the category of Threat stats. Warriors and Druids generate threat by attacking. Druid threat is largely generated by scaling threat modifiers on damage done, and warrior threat is largely a static amount based on abilities. Different strokes and all that. Paladins have a weird thing going on with a lot of their threat being generated by reactive abilities.
For druids, attacks need to land for threat to be generated. Hit, obviously, is useful for that because it can counter some of the 9% miss chance. Expertise counters the 6% Dodge and 12% parry chance. The block chance cannot be reduced.
It’s a lot harder to quantify threat scaling due to these effects than it is for DPS. As a general statement average optimal TPS (threat per second) will increase by 1% per increase of 1% of Hit chance. It can only be said that that is reflective of optimal performance only. In situations where there are adds or rage issues or any of that, hit may be more or less important.
In terms of threat generation, Expertise is twice as beneficial as Hit because it increases your chance to hit by 2% by reducing both dodges and parries. If you want to stack one to improve threat, Expertise is the way to go until you reach the 6% mark. From the 6% point onward, you have pushed dodges off the attack table and are only reducing parries, so it is equal to Hit as a means of increasing TPS.
The real benefit of expertise is that it is also a mitigation stat. Due to parry mechanics, when a boss parries a blow, its next attack may be sped up:
Parry & Attack Speed Reduction
When you parry an attack, it reduces the time of your next main hand attack. This applies to both players and NPCs, so when an NPC parries an attack its next attack may occur more quickly than normal. Depending on how much time is left until your next attack, one of three things will happen to your main hand swing timer:
- If the next attack would normally occur within 20% of your weapon speed after the parry, there is no effect.
- If the next attack would normally occur between 20% and 60% of your weapon speed later, it happens 20% of your weapon speed later instead.
- If the next attack would normally occur more than 60% of your weapon speed later, the time until your next attack is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed.
For example, with a 2.0 speed weapon, if your next attack would normally occur .3 seconds after the parry, it will still happen at that time. If it would normally occur anywhere between .4 and 1.2 seconds after the parry, it instead happens .4 seconds later. And if it were to normally happen 1.5 seconds after the parry, this would be reduced by .8 seconds causing it to happen .7 seconds later.
The benefit of this is high. If you reached the soft cap on Expertise and reduced parries by 6%, that would reduce the number of incoming attacks and the amount of incoming damage. How much is an amount that is hard to quantify because it is highly situational.
Should you stack Expertise?
Personal preference: I wouldn’t be stacking it on my normal tanking set. I fall onto the Effective Health side of the fence rather than Avoidance right now. When I start building a more avoidance-centric set, I probably will stack Expertise in it. Why? Because the greater avoidance would mean I’d be taking less steady damage, meaning rage generation would be less stable. Being able to hit more reliably will offset some of that, the attacks would hit and the damage from them would help generate rage. Also, a heavy avoidance kit would be sacrificing survival stats and reducing damage by reducing parry gibs would be a good thing.
General Context: If you find survivability is not an issue and can either add Expertise or replace some items to add it, you can increase your threat generation. The more threat you as the tank can generate, the wider you are opening the window for raid DPS to shoot through.
Further Information:
Wanderlei - On Avoidance
Effective Health Theory
Finding the Expertise Hard Cap
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